Monthly Archives: April 2012

The Strange Allure of Jennifer Love Hewitt

Television, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,
Secretly, I always imagine she's posing for me....

A few years ago, I was teaching English in South Korea. Unfortunately, during this time, I had very limited access to American television shows. Sure, I could pirate them, but I’m not the kind of person who does that, so I was limited by whatever I could purchase from Seoul entertainment stores. And the selection was awful. However, one thing I kept seeing each and every time I went to the store was the dvd collections for Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Ghost Whisperer. Now, I had never seen the show before, so it didn’t really interest me, but I am a science fiction fanatic, so I kept looking at that package every time I went there. Finally, one day the first season was on sale (this is when they were still making the show, around Season 3). So, I figured it wouldn’t be the worst investment ever, and I bought the first season.

Having lots of free time, I diligently watched through the season, and then I was somewhat hooked, so I bought Season 2. And then I kept going until I came home from Korea and continued watching it until it went off the air.

Now, I should probably make a bit of a disclosure for those who have never watched Ghost Whisperer. It’s a quirky show. It’s not going to get any Emmys (at least I don’t think it did during its run). It’s a show about a woman who can talk to the dead, but basically it’s really a show about the woman with a really strange, charmed life, who just so happens to also talk to the dead. Now, I make this distinction because that distinction is necessary. This woman has the most Barbie-like existence in the history of television. She interacts with people in a way that really seems only important to the character played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, and whenever there’s an important conflict, the only real thought the writers and directors were probably thinking was: “How can we make this come out right while still making Jennifer Love Hewitt look really hot and cute?”

Because that’s what is special about the show. It shows 4 or 5 seasons of the cutest girl on television interacting with everyone else who may or not yet realize she’s the cutest girl on television. There are ghosts, of course, but they really only serve as scenery and distractions, to make you forget that the show is really about the cutest girl on television. And she’ll pout every now and then, which believe it or not, makes her seem even cuter.

What’s fascinating about the show is that it deals with some really heady issues that sometimes go into jump the shark territory of television, like the Buffy-like moments where Jennifer Love Hewitt comes head to head against the evil old guy of evil who seems to want to make all the dead people stay undead instead of go to the happy place that Jennifer Love Hewitt uses her cuteness to send them to. And during that confrontation, instead of just offing her with a big anvil, like any other diabolical evil guy would do, he ends up talking to her, seeing her pout, and then kind of turns into a wishy washy evil genius who then disappears for awhile until rating seasons comes back again.

Essentially, you get the main attributes of Ghost Whisperer. The cute girl wins out all the time.

But I didn’t come to talk about that show itself, but about Jennifer Love Hewitt. You see, during that show, even though (spoiler alert!) her husband dies during the show and comes back as some other guy who dies during the show but is allowed to live as her ex-husband reincarnated until they can find a way to just start using the old actor again (because everyone forgot it was another guy whose body he took over), the whole show manages to be about the angst of the cutest girl on television.

When the show ended, I felt a part of me died, too, because then I realized my cute girl factor of television would be missing input. And then I found out that she had a brand new show, called The Client List. Which surprisingly is about her being a massage therapist who gives happy endings to her customers. You’d think this show would be somewhat gritty, but it’s not. Instead, it ends up being about (surprise) a cute girl who just so happens to be a massage therapist who gives happy endings to her customers. And man, they really push the cuteness factor in this show.

I watched the first episode of the show and found myself laughing out loud because, first, it’s preposterous and, second, it’s equally ridiculous. Her husband left her the day she started a new job at a massage parlour, and instead of moving to cheaper housing, she decides she’s going to keep her kids in the same two parent housing they’ve had by giving handjobs to her customers. Well, I think that’s what she’s doing, as they don’t actually go into detail about what happens after she rubs down the bodies of the male models who serve as her clients. And yes, I did say male models because once she starts giving the “expensive” rub downs, her clientele goes from being ugly old men to being supermodel male models who you’d expect to pop up in a Madonna video. Not exactly sure why these guys would ever need a masseuse like her and in this particular out of the way place, but apparently Hollywood didn’t think the audience really needed realism here.

So, we get to see her pout when things don’t go right, and we get to see her come to work in all sorts of sexy get-ups that you’d expect a female escort to be wearing, if she worked for a high-fashion call girl outfit. But instead, she works for a massage place (that’s next door to a Karate studio) and does the $5000 an hour call girl dressing regardless.

What’s interesting is that they never felt the need to actually point out what she’s doing for this serious bank she’s getting from this job. She’s either giving handjobs (and getting far more money than ANY handjob masseuse EVER got) or she’s having sex with them at the massage parlour, which seems kind of strange as they haven’t made the show out to be “that” kind of show YET.

But in all, what I think really happened was they found another way to bring Jennifer Love Hewitt back to living rooms to exploit that cuteness factor of hers. What’s even funnier is that the hype for the show centered around Hewitt’s interviews where she talks about how it might be about time for her to find a boyfriend, and all I can think to myself is that no man lives in that fantasy world that she has constructed for herself, in which guys are all supermodel guys and all love listening to her and doing things that practically no human is capable of pulling off in a relationship. Her world is constructed just so that Jennifer Love Hewitt fits into it, kind of like that little girl fantasy world of dolls and stuffed animals that someone eventually has to grow out of (or become a real princess in some fantasy land probably located in Eastern Europe somewhere).

In all, I want to thank Jennifer Love Hewitt for letting me explore her world with her again for at least one more hour a week. I mean, it’s not a real world, and the people are never as scripted as they are on this show, but hey, that’s what makes it so much more enjoyable.

Talking About Student Loans Is Pandering; Doing Something About Student Loans Is Progress

Business, Economics, Education, Politics, , , , , ,

The latest appeal to the votes of young people involves the student loan crisis. President Obama has started to “talk” about student loans to show that he’s paying attention to young people issues. Mitt Romney is talking about student loans to show that he’s not overlooking the issue either. Students (or former students with debt) are thinking, hey, they’re finally paying attention to an issue that’s near and dear to me.

Fact: They’re not. In fact, what both the president and his opponent are doing is called pandering. Pandering is when someone talks about an issue that is important to people, but in reality, they’re not actually going to do anything substantial about it. They might, if forced into a corner, make some minor stride, but when pandering, the point is to show that you care without actually really caring.

Obama mentioned yesterday that he just recently paid off his student loans. So young people should understand that he “feels” your pain. No, he doesn’t. He’s a one percenter who is filthy rich and will never have to worry about paying off a loan again in his lifetime. He mentioned he paid off his loans 8 years ago. 8 years ago, he was in the Senate, which meant he was in a position that allowed him almost unlimited access to the abilty to paying off his debt. THAT is how he paid off his student loans. Not through some great government assistance that came to his rescue. Unless you consider that government assistance to be a position in the Senate.

And Romney talking about student loans is just a filthy rich billionaire who doesn’t give a flying crap about people in debt. He made his money off of other people, and when people do that, they don’t care about the struggles of others, especially when your company that made you rich makes a mint off of people who are struggling anyway.

What’s of more concern here is the fact that so many of us are overwhelmed with student loan debt that we may never be able to pay off in our lifetimes. Generally, the response of the rest of society (usually from people who are well off and have never had to really suffer under any real debt) is that it’s all our own fault for going into debt, that we’re a bunch of lazy young people who need to go get a job, or some other innane banter that unravels once you actually start thinking about it.

Neither President Obama nor Citizen Romney have any intentions of doing anything to upset the apple cart of student loan debt that so many banks are profiting off these days. Government looks after the wealthy and the banks, not students or common citizens. Instead, government panders to the common people, throws them table scraps and then pretends they really care.

Expect more of this kind of drivel leading up to the Election of 2012. Neither Congress nor the President is going to enact anything that really helps students. Keeping a loan rate at a lower interest rate ISN’T assisting anyone in any great way as the debt still exists, the balance continues to increase, and nothing actually got any better. It’s just more of the same, kind of like “keeping Bush’s tax cuts” is somehow supposed to “create jobs” by doing exactly what we’ve been doing before when somehow that wasn’t leading to the creation of jobs in the past, but is somehow going to lead to a surplus of jobs that logical economics can’t seem to figure out how to make happen.

What would solve the student loan problem? Mass forgiveness of debt, kind of like people have been advocating for forclosures, which are forgiven through bankruptcy. The problem with student loan debt is that bankruptcy does NOTHING to assist someone. If you fall under, you fall under for life, and you’ll never get back out under it because the lobbyist groups that put our government people in power were on the side of banks that wanted to screw over students with student loan debt. Think about this for a moment. You can gamble away every cent you might ever borrow from a bank and be forgiven, but if one dime of that was in student loan debt, you’re screwed. As long as that one issue remains, no politician is ever going to help out the little guy. Why not? Because they honestly don’t care.

If they tell you they do care, they’re pandering. Remember that because no one else is going to tell you that. Instead, the media will tell us what a great job both sides are doing at “caring about” the problem by doing absolutely nothing but painting over the broken foundation.

Gender Issues at West Point

Politics, Relationships, , , , , , ,

There’s a story that’s been making the rounds this week from both West Point (the United States Military Academy) and Annapolis (the US Naval Academy) about women who were allegedly raped and then pushed out of their respective academies by a system that wants nothing to do with providing justice to women who might have been sexually abused by upperclass cadets and midshipmen. As someone who attended West Point back in the 1980s, all I can say is that I’m ashamed that such actions are taking place today and really wish I hadn’t read about such things.

You see, when I attended, women were just breaking ground at graduating from West Point, and it was not rare to see a lot of hostility waged against any woman that attempted to get through a very male-centered environment. My first squad leader in cadet basic training was a woman, and she instilled high standards in me that I never forgot. As the leader of our squad, she had several women in this squad, and all I kept thinking to myself during that first summer was how hard those women had it. The male cadets were complete assholes around them, yet they struggled through and somehow made it. Not all of them did, but they persevered. It was kind of an honor to see them go through the work they went through to make the inroads they did.

I’m sorry that there are men today who are still thinking of women in the Corps of Cadets as potential targets for doing things that men should have evolved way beyond. Especially at an esteemed institution like that. Over the years, I used to think that West Point was way above such things, and when the Citadel was going through its gender problems years later, all I could think was that West Point got through it before them, and it was only a matter of time before all the rest of the military institutions did as well. Turns out, I saw things to be better than they actually were. Apparently, we still have a long way to go.

Hopefully, we move forward. But I suspect that we still have a long way to go yet. And that just makes me sad. Especially when I saw the crap women had to go through over 20 years ago to make it easier for women who might come later. It’s like their sacrifices were for nothing.

Creating Mythology

Religion, Writing, , , , , ,

One of my all-time passions has been the study of mythology. From the ideas of Joseph Campbell to the attempts of anthropologists to link ancient religion with ancient daily life, I’ve always been fascinated by the manifestations that people put into the study of symbolic metaphor and tying one’s behaviors to the perceptions of one’s surrounding universe. In all of that study, one of the things that has always intrigued me is the concept of unlocking secrets and discovering mysteries buried within ambiguities.

One of the struggles I had with writing one of my most recent novels, The Ameriad, was how to generate mythology in every day concepts that may not have existed, but could so easily mirror the past beliefs of other civilizations. While The Ameriad was developed with a sense of humor involved, it was still fascinating to generate an historical mythology that dealt with gods leading the first Americans to our rocky shores.

So why am I talking about mythology now? Well, it turns out that my latest writing project involves another aspect of mythological thinking that I haven’t had a chance to play around with, and that’s the idea of following up mysteries within ambiguities. In other words, I want to create a sense of mythology within the general world, yet touch on those mysteries with a sense of something bigger than the main characters themselves, something so strong and vivid that it literally takes a life of its own, hinting that it may actually exist outside of the book of fiction itself. To do this, I’m starting to explore the nuances of language, in how people talk to each other and often leave certain things out, while dropping hints of something slightly below the surface. To do this, I’m exploring several organizations that existed on the periphery of fringe communities in the 1990s that were often subjects that people talked around in ways that indicated some people knew a little more than they were revealing. An example is a religious organization that existed in the late 1980s that rose up to international prestige in select groups, yet was often difficult to contact no matter how hard you tried. There was a sense of guarded indifference to outsiders, so those trying to find out more information were often led down blind corridors and only the very devout were ever capable of getting close enough to discover more information.

That is the sort of thing I’m exploring with the topic I’m dealing with. Throughout history, there have always been fringe elements existing on the periphery of our society, and whenever people attempted to make contact, they were often frowned upon, either through strict membership rules or attempts to keep out the prying eyes of government authorities.

I’ll keep you informed. Or maybe I won’t.

Secret Service Agents Fired for Being Cheapskates with Hookers

News, Politics, , , , , , ,

You know, when it comes down to it, the Secret Service agents who were fired (retired, or whatever) from service were let go because one of them allegedly decided to screw over an escort after she had spent the night in his room for an agreed amount of money that he decided not to pay. According to an interview with the woman, she agreed to come to be his escort for the night for $800, and when it came time for paying after it was all over, he tried to give her $30 and send her on her way. Now, you can think whatever you want about whether or not things were right or wrong; the reason this whole situation blew out of control was because one Secret Service agent decided to renege on the contract he negotiated with the woman.

Now, their come-uppance came about because Americans have a problem with anything that involves sex. We’re a repressed country that still seems to be stuck in a Puritan mentality, while we all sit at home and watch debauchery on television as reality programming. In other words, we want to hold people to standards that we generally don’t support ourselves.

It’s the same thing with politicians. We blow a gasket whenever we discover a politican had a blow job from a woman not his wife, but we support all sorts of other people who live all sorts of depraved lifsestyle, buying their books, CDs, going to their movies and supporting them in all sorts of obnoxious ways. Statistics indicate that Americans are imbibers in all sorts of illegal drugs (from marijuana to cocaine), yet we’ll crucify anyone for smoking a joint twenty years ago when they went to college.

Basically, we’re hypocrits who don’t know when to just turn the other cheek.

But back to our Secret Service agents. If this behavior really did take place, what we basically had was a group of executive agents who partied in Colombia with the local prostitutes. It’s not illegal there, so they broke now rules. They broke “moral” codes that are put into writing by government standards. So, as politicians will generally have sex with anything that moves, and then lie about it, anyone else who gets caught is held to standards that, well, no one else follows. The Department of Defense has been releasing statements about how its rules FORBID such activity from its own soldiers, yet if you served in the military, you saw it around practically every military post in the United States and around every military post overseas. At Leonard Wood, Missouri, I remember stepping off post and finding taxi drivers that didn’t even ask you where you were going as they were so used to driving you directly to the whorehouses located all around that particular post. It was so institutionalized that cab drivers would wait in the lobby of the cathouse to get their cut of the transaction. I remember almost getting into a fist fight with a cab driver because I wanted him to drive me to an actual restaurant where I could get something to eat, not to have sex with Asian hookers working at the local whorehouses (I know that’s what they were because the cab driver spent no less than five minutes detailing “how wonderful the Vietnamese pussy is for young GIs like you”. Suffice to say, there wasn’t a single military installation I visited or served on that didn’t have some huge prostitution thing going on around it.

The point is that the miltary didn’t care. They practically supported it. So when I hear that the Department of Defense is “disappointed” in its soldiers who may have been involved, I have to seriously laugh and ask, “what the hell are you talking about?”

What’s sort of funny about this whole “scandal” is that if the executive Secret Service agent had actually just paid the money that the woman claims he promised, he’d still have a job today. Instead, he lost his. And so did a bunch of others who actually paid their agreed upon rates. Talk about being screwed. One guy, as usual, ruined it for the rest of them.

The more interesting factor is that it does open up an opportunity to talk about the real problems of prostitution, sexual slavery and trafficking. But that won’t happen. Our reason for being outraged is exactly for those reasons, the latter ones particularly. Yet, when all is said and done, we’ll railroad a bunch of people out of government service and do absolutely nothing to make life better and safer for women who are forced into lives of prostitution by greedy men who prey on them. The window for opportunity is right now, and instead, we’ll focus on how bad the Secret Service is morally, and then politicians will use it as campaign fodder for the November election. And the band will continue to play on.

Unfortunately, some people just don’t seem to understand sarcasm

Politics, , , , , ,

I was going to be writing another post today, but I received a screed today from someone who was inflamed by one of my previous postings. She apparently read the title of the piece, went into a critical reading mode and then started scribing her attack before she finished absorbing what she read. You see, the post she was responding to was from September 7, 2011, in which I took Iran to task over whipping a woman in public as their response to her “infidelities” or something equally stupid when it comes to countries doing really stupid things. The tone I took was straight out sarcasm, in which I acted like Iran was completely just in its ridiculous actions (by pointing out with equally stupid comparisons, using the same ridiculous logic they were using to condemn her in the first place).

As I realize, not everyone is capable of seeing this for sarcasm and the person attacked me for being a misogynistic hater of women. In other words, I devoted an entire column to how ridiculous Iran was in taking such actions against women, only to have someone ridicule me for being hateful towards women.

I give up. It doesn’t matter that the article was reproduced by dozens of other sites and hailed by several different bloggers as evoking conversation where it was needed. Some people just don’t get it, and no matter how hard I try, I still end up with someone attacking me for doing the complete opposite of what she purports.

It is stuff like this that makes me think the struggle is no longer worth it. Fuck people and the hostilty that the world has for women. Apparently getting involved only creates misery for those who try to bring such issues to light. It’s not worth it any more.

Next time Iran, Iraq, Turkey or any other woman-hating country decides to stone a woman for speaking her mind, I’m going to ignore it and watch the Simpsons instead. At least Homer doesn’t send me a two page screed, pointing out how much I hate women in reponse to a post where I am saying the complete opposite.

If You Own a Mac, Expect to be Spammed by Companies Who Claim to Fix Viruses

Business, News, Technology, , , ,

I’ve just started to receive “virus protection” emails from less than legitimate companies that never could sell their business to PC users in the past. I guess they figure that Mac people are stupid because they’ve never had to use virus protection in the past. So, they’re spamming the crap out of us, convinced that we’re all morons who have never seen the inside of a computer before.

I kind of knew this was going to happen, but I really wish companies like this wouldn’t prey on people all of the time. Yes, I own a Mac. But I’m also a pc technician who doesn’t need a SINGLE FREAKING BIT OF ASSISTANCE FROM STUPID COMPANIES THAT CAN’T SELL THEIR PRODUCTS TO PC PEOPLE SO THEY THINK THEY’VE FOUND A NEW MARKET.

Here’s the moral of the story: Mac people have had it good because virus makers made their crap for PCs BECAUSE more people were using PCs than Macs. Now, the number of people using Macs has increased (not because they’re better than PCs but) because there are more people using computers today than there were 20 years ago. That’s really the only difference.

What this means is that people who make Macs will have to be a little more diligent in solutions. If not, people will stop buying Macs. It’s simple as that. Software solutions in the name of stupid companies that made crappy products for PCs aren’t going to somehow make a mint on “stupid” Mac users. They’re going to lose money in that market, too.

Just saying.

Visiting a New World All Over Again–A Review of Skyrim

Computer Games, , , , ,

As most people know (who know me), I’m a big fan of good computer games, especially ones that are deeply absorbed in roleplaying. I loved Fallout 3 (even with all of its flaws), and I’ve probably played most of the major online MMORPGs, although I’ve missed out on a few recent ones. Shortly before Skyrim, I was playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, which was a nice break from the whole World of Warcraft thing. I vowed I was done with WoW, and this time I’m pretty sure I am. However, a month or so into TOR, and I really didn’t feel like firing up the game again. I also knew there was a new game that was just released, and I was aching to give it a spin.

Years back, I played the greatest RPG of all time, in my opinion, and that was Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. That was the first real game that let you totally lose yourself in their world and have a great time with it. Their sequel Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion was also ground-breaking, but to be honest, it just never did it for me. However, Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has reclaimed its throne as the king of computer rpgs.

I’ve been playing it for the last week or so (bought it last weekend), and after a few bad starts, I now find myself completely immersed in that world. What makes it so much fun is that there’s not a lot you can’t do in that world. You can buy property, get married, go on a murderous rampage, become a god amongst men, or just spend your time cooking food. Aside from fishing (which for some bizarre reason seems absent in this game), there’s not a lot you can’t do.

Last night, I bought special equipment for my new house and then took my trusty companion Uthgerd (or whatever her name is) with me to clean out a vampire’s lair. We got through to the very end, and then in an epic battle with the leader of the vampires, Uthgerd died. Unfortunately, you can’t resurrect a character in this game, so she was dead for good this time. I could have gone back to an earlier saved game, but it was such a battle to get to that last vampire that I decided her sacrifice would have to be worth it. I went back to the local town, hooked up with this warrior dude npc that was looking for adventure, and Uthgerd was “replaced” with somone new. I felt kind of bad about it, as she’d been with me since I was literally level one (I was level 11 now). That’s how immersive a game like that can be. I actually felt bad that I left her dead in that lair somewhere across the map. Not a lot of games can really leave you feeling that sense of loss.

And that’s what makes a game great. Or one of the things. It’s not just hacking and slashing that makes a great rpg. It’s losing yourself in that world. It’s when you have a conversation with an npc and then you remember that npc next time you run into him, and you actually have a feeling about that person when you remember the previous encounter (“weren’t you the guy that was a dick to me when I came here last time?“). Those are the sorts of things that evoke a sense of enjoyment when you play a game like this.

Over the years, very few games have ever reached that level of immersion with me. Every Fallout game I’ve ever played has succeeded at this. One of the earliest computer games, Phantasie I and then Wizard’s Crown (both by SSI), did this. Starflight 1 did this for me, where I actually cared about my crewmates on my ship. Each member of my team had a personality, even if the game didn’t advertise that they did (I kind of filled in their personalities just by the amount of time I was playing with them as part of my team). The Ultima series did this as well, to a point. And then games really started to develop complete storylines with characters, like with Neverwinter Nights.

And then things kind of went the wrong direction, where the games started filling in the interaction stories for you. One of the reasons I really didn’t like Dragon Age (by Bioware) was because they went through way too much work to fill in the interaction stories so that I wasn’t experiencing it…I was just watching it. The Witcher felt that way to me as well, almost to the point where I felt I was just clicking random buttons while the game was actually playing through the story.

Which is why a game like this is so welcome to a creative game player. They put in some of the story for you, but in the end, your imagination fills in the rest. And that’s what I consider to be really good storytelling. Sometimes they can do too much, but other times, like Skyrim, they seem to just get it right.